Category: Crowd-Seeded New York Indigo Farm

Indigo dyeing workshops, NYC, 2019 In 2017, I began growing indigo from seed in my Brooklyn apartment after reading the legend of Eliza Lucas Pinckney, credited with having made indigo a North Carolina cash crop from 1745–75. Understanding the role enslaved laborers played in indigo’s success, including applying cultural knowledge of how to grow indigo…

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Silk shoe inspired by Eliza Lucas Pinckney’s brocaded shoes. 2018. Embroidery on indigo-dyed silks sitting on a bed of Japanese indigo flowers going to seed. Note: the flowers are not dye-producing. It’s the leaves from which dye is made. Eliza is considered in common historical literature the “American mother of indigo.” She persisted in planting…

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In exchange for space, soil, compost, beds, and overall farm support, kindness, generosity and good cheer, I led a free, public indigo-dyeing workshop on Governors Island on September 8th, 2018. Lots of friends, some of whom helped grow and transplant the indigo, former students and families with children participated. While I prepared a hot bath…

Thanks to the talented Lily Maslanka for these photographs of the most recent fall harvest at the GrowNYC Teaching Garden. Lily has been experimenting successfully with extracting pigment from woad, while I’ve been wholly focused on using the Japanese indigo.   Pin It

One can go straight from leaves to dye without waiting for pigment to settle to the bottom of a fermented vat. Instructions on this website was helpful. I made my own adjustments.     Pin It

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